Toyota driver Anthony Davidson can consider himself very lucky to have walked away from this sickening crash, which ended a promising debut for the TS030 Hybrid at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The crash happened after the #81 Ferrari F458 Italia (GTE Am) driven by Piergiuseppe Perrazini clipped the back of Davidson’s #8 Toyota (LMP1) near the end of the high speed Mulsanne straight.
Davidson’s Toyota was sent into the air where it flipped before crashing heavily into the tyre barrier. Perrazini’s Ferrari also impacted heavily with the barrier and ended on its roof.
Thankfully, it has been reported that Perrazini is okay. Meanwhile, Davidson, initially thought to be fine, is now in hospital where he has been found to have a broken back, suffering fractures to his T11 and T12 vertebrae.
Davidson is alert and has tweeted, “Well that was a big one! Lying in a French hospital with a broken back wasn’t what I had in mind at this stage in the race…”
Footage of the accident can be seen after the break. Both drivers are very lucky men. We must pause to acknowledge the safety regulations placed on cars and thank the track officials who assisted the drivers.
In Hour 11, the second Toyota TS030 Hybrid retired with engine problems.
[Source: Autosport]
5 replies on “Davidson survives horror crash at Le Mans”
Safety regs don’t look like they worked that well. Those prototypes are supposed to have a number of different aero aids that stop them from flipping in a spin, Toyota seems to have failed in that area.
That’s a fair comment Dave, I guess my point was that Davidson walked away.
The prototypes really are too light, almost looks like a paper plane. Although the trade off is, if a heavier car is thrown into the air, it would do more damage to the surroundings and anyone that may be in their path… Tough one for the law makers. I hope Davidson a speedy and full recovery. 🙁
Fair point Liam, he did get away without a stretcher so the end result is good. Davidson is just lucky the Ferarri tagged him on the entry to Mulsanne corner and not on one of the straights.
Having said that, when it caught the air and flipped it probably wiped off a lot of speed which made for a slower speed into the tyres. The damage done (two fractured vertebrae) when the car landed flat on the floor was the worst bit, there being next to nothing between the car’s floor and the driver’s butt. Basically, if I was on board I would have preferred for it to stay on the ground because those cars have a lot more to absorb the energy in any direction other than through the floor.
An interesting crash to compare with is Ortelli’s big one in 2008 where the car snapped sideways at full speed near the end of Monza’s long front straight, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_yfiE9Esfg from about 3:45 – you can see it stays on the deck until it gets onto the bumpier grass and digs in. This was before the shark fins were added supposedly to make them safer in a spin, maybe the shark fins have taken it too far and made them more likely to flip in a ‘backwards’ aero-induced flip like the Toyota did (and like Webber/Dumbreck in the Merc CLR) rather than a ‘forwards’ flip from digging into the ground like Ortelli’s Courage did at Monza.
I obviously hope Ant gets better ASAP, and it will be interesting to see if somebody else needs to step up for the Sky F1 commentary team next weekend. With one down they’ll be sweating on Martin Brundle keeping his LMP2 car in a straight line for the rest of the race!
[…] took the outright lead in the sixth hour. Almost as soon as the #7 car took the lead the sister car crashed out dramatically after Anthony Davidson tangled with a GTE Am Ferrari 458 Italia. Davidson suffered fractures to his […]